Fig. 7

Outline of the calculations behind the deconvolution analysis to estimate the relative contribution of blood components to the sRNA profiles of whole blood. For each purified blood component specific sample, the eluted sRNA mass was calculated as the product of the sRNA concentration with the elution volume of the sample after purification. The eluted sRNA mass was then divided by the number of sorted cells to obtain the average sRNA mass per cell. For plasma samples, the volume inserted to extract the sRNAs was used to calculate the sRNA mass per plasma fraction. The sRNA mass per blood component sample was further multiplied by the blood count of the respective cell type to obtain for each cellular fraction the sRNA mass per blood volume. For plasma samples it was assumed that they make up half of the blood volume. The small RNA content was then used to scale the RPM values of the blood component specific samples obtained by sRNA sequencing. As a next step, the average scaled RPM values was calculated for each blood component type. Per sRNA these mean values per blood derivative were finally normalized to sum up to 1. These values reflect the proportional contribution of the distinct blood components to the global expression profile of a specific sRNA in a whole blood sample.